Why 94% of Marketing Teams Are Still Doing This Wrong

We're wrapping up 2025, and over the next few days, we'll be sharing key insights from our year-end report: AI in Marketing 2025 Annual Report.

The report will be available for all subscribers to download in full for free from the 22nd of December.

The real AI revolution in 2025 wasn't flashy chatbots or generative content. It was the mundane operational workflows that most executives ignored.

The business case was unambiguous: AI automation increased marketing productivity equivalent to 5-15% of total marketing spending. Campaign setup time dropped 40-60%. Marketing teams saved an average of 12 hours per week. Implementations delivered 300% average ROI. The marketing automation market grew from $36.8B in 2025 to $107.5 by 2028.

Yet only 6% of organizations successfully implemented comprehensive automation. 94% hadn't.

The gap wasn't technological. It was architectural.

Organizations that treat AI as a tool collection rather than a workflow transformation consistently underperform. And most marketing departments are still collecting tools.

Real-world examples demonstrated the scope of what's possible when you get this right:

Marketing teams reduced manual task time 32-48%. E-commerce companies cut campaign launch from 4.3 days to 6.7 hours. A 4-person team scaled from 3 platforms/15K prospects to 12 platforms/67K prospects.

Translation: The same team. Three times the reach. Four times the scale. One-seventh the time.

But here's why you probably haven't achieved this: implementation requires three pillars most organizations don't have.

Pillar 1: Pristine data infrastructure - Unified, governed, consistent data across systems. Not fragmented spreadsheets and disconnected platforms.

Pillar 2: Capable AI agents - Contextually aware systems making autonomous decisions. Not chatbots that need constant supervision.

Pillar 3: Robust orchestration engines - Coordinating agents, managing workflows, ensuring human oversight. Not disconnected point solutions.

Organizations failing any single pillar experienced 60%+ lower ROI. Most organizations fail all three.

The barriers were brutally clear:

But the implementation gaps revealed the deeper problem:

Connect those numbers: Nearly every organization is spending money on AI. Almost none are building the infrastructure that makes AI actually work.

You bought the tools. You didn't build the system. And tools without a system deliver only 5-10% of the promised value.

Most AI initiatives failed because data was fragmented, ungoverned, and inconsistent. The platforms promise "plug and play." The reality requires data governance, workflow redesign, and organizational change management; your team doesn't have the capacity to execute.

Here's the part that should change your hiring plans immediately:

Coordinator positions: down 60-70%

Operations positions: up 150-180%

Strategic positions: up 90-110%

Creative positions: up 40-60%

Employment was transformed rather than reduced. The question isn't "how many people do we need?" The question is "what kind of people do we need?"

If your marketing team still has the same role distribution as 2023, you're structurally misaligned with the work that matters. You're overstaffed in execution and understaffed in strategy and operations.

Non-adopters spent $47K-$63K annually on activities adopters automated for $2,400. Every quarter of delay equals 13 weeks of competitor learning curve you'll never recover.

That's not a scare tactic. That's math.

The principle that separated winners from losers in 2025: Organizations treating automation as operational infrastructure rather than a collection of productivity tools built systematic advantages that competitors can't replicate.

Tool collections scale linearly. Add a tool, get marginal improvement. Add another tool, get another marginal improvement. Maybe you're 20% more efficient across 10 tools.

Infrastructure scales exponentially. Unified data feeds multiple agents. Agents coordinate through orchestration. Orchestration enables automation you couldn't do manually. Each component multiplies the value of others.

A 4-person team doesn't scale to 12 platforms through better tools. They scale through infrastructure that makes the tools actually work together.

Most marketing departments have 15 disconnected tools and zero infrastructure connecting them. Then they wonder why their "AI transformation" delivered 8% efficiency gains instead of 300% productivity improvements.

You probably have:

You probably don't have:

The gap between what you bought and what you need explains why 94% of organizations haven't successfully implemented comprehensive automation.

It's not that you didn't try. It's that you tried to solve an infrastructure problem with a tool purchasing strategy.

And the market won't wait for you to figure this out. Non-adopters are spending 20-26x more on activities that adopters automate. Every quarter of delay is 13 weeks of competitor advantage you'll never close.

The organizations that treated 2025 as "the year of AI experimentation" will enter 2026 realizing experimentation doesn't build infrastructure. And infrastructure is what actually wins.

—

We're publishing our complete AI in Marketing 2025 Report on December 22nd. 10 chapters analyzing what actually happened this year—including why most marketing automation initiatives failed and what the 6% who succeeded actually built differently.

Stay tuned. You'll want to see what you missed.

— Torsten & Peter

Loved this edition? Share it and unlock rewards!

Our sponsor today:

Now through the end of the year is prime streaming time on Roku, with viewers spending 3.5 hours each day streaming content and shopping online. Roku Ads Manager simplifies campaign setup, lets you segment audiences, and provides real-time reporting. And, you can test creative variants and run shoppable ads to drive purchases directly on-screen.

Bonus: we’re gifting you $5K in ad credits when you spend your first $5K on Roku Ads Manager. Just sign up and use code GET5K. Terms apply.

Use code GET5K now